Cisco Collaboration Comes to the Rescue for INTEGRIS Health

More than 20 years ago when INTEGRIS Health chose to invest in collaboration technologies, little did they know they were making a decision that would one day save lives.

With more than 16 hospitals and 9,000 employees throughout Oklahoma, INTEGRIS is the state’s largest health care system. An early adopter of telemedicine, they implemented video technology in the early 1990s. But what started simply as an effective way to connect hospitals has grown into a life-saving program that has decreased stroke mortality rates and increased access to health specialists.

“It’s been a very effective and efficient way of ensuring that the right patient gets the right treatment at exactly the right time,” said INTEGRIS’ Director of Telehealth Pam Forducey.

And with medical emergencies like a stroke, every minute matters. When someone suffers from a stroke, doctors have less than 4 hours to evaluate the patient’s treatment – which could mean the difference between life and death. With CiscoTelePresence, patients have direct access to neurologists, no matter where they are, expediting the diagnosis and treatment. To date more than 400 patients have been treated through the TeleStroke program with zero mortalities and treatment rates that far exceed national benchmarks.

TeleSpeech: Delivers high-quality speech therapy services to students in rural distracts with speech-language pathologist shortages. To date, INTEGRIS Health has provided more than 100,000 therapy sessions.

TeleMental Health: Enables a mobile team to provide around-the-clock clinical assessments to patients with mental conditions. Since its inception, the team has conducted more than 4,000 mental health consults.

TeleHepatology: Allows specialty physicians to work with rural practitioners to monitor and treat patients with Hepatitis C. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections has cared for 20 incarcerated patients via TeleHepatology and saved more than $100,000 in transportation costs.

Soon INTEGRIS plans to expand its programs with TinyTeleTalkProgram to visually connect premature babies in neonatal units with their mothers at rural hospitals and TeleOncology to make top oncologists available to rural practitioners.

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